“The 84-year-old pope’s schedule is considerably shorter than John Paul’s five-day visit was, and it includes no events with Santeros, or leaders of any other religions for that matter. A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Benedict’s schedule could still be tweaked, but he absolutely ruled out a meeting with Santería representatives. Lombardi said Santería does not have an “institutional leadership,” which the Vatican is used to dealing with in cases when it arranges meetings with other religions. “It is not a church” in the traditional sense, Lombardi said.”

On Saturday, he traveled to Ouidah on Benin’s Atlantic coast, more or less the Vatican of voodoo. Historically, Benin has been the cradle of voodoo in West Africa, and it remains a huge presence. A famed python temple is right across the street from Ouidah’s Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, a reminder of how Catholicism and voodoo live cheek by jowl.

One might think the trip afforded a chance to open lines of communication with a religious movement that enjoys a vast following, estimated at between 30 million and 60 million people worldwide — comparable to the global footprint of, say, Methodism.

Yet Benedict never made any reference to voodoo, and didn’t meet a priest or other exponent. His rhetoric in Ouidah, asserting that Christianity represents a triumph over “occultism and evil spirits,” was taken by some as a swipe. That produced some resentment in a country that’s proud of its unique religious heritage — Jan. 10, for instance, is marked as “voodoo day.”

Only the most blinkered Catholic partisan could look at these instances and not see a unifying theme. A message that true “interfaith” and “dialog” only exists in the Catholic Church between faiths it is forced to respect through social or political power. Or in very rare instances, when it is shamed into changing its behavior. Twelve years ago Pope John Paul II issued a historic apology for the sins of the Catholic Church. He apologized to Jews, heretics, women, Gypsies and to native peoples. But apologies have to be backed by action to mean something. So long as Benedict continues his trend of ignoring or insulting “non-institutional” indigenous, traditional, and Pagan religions, we all, to paraphrase Lazaro Cuesta, will continue to live in the Catholic basement.

Perhaps they should consider moving out of the Catholic basement and pitch a tent within the Modern Pagan encampment.

Obsidia

I wonder if the Pope is against “non-institutional leadership” because it can include BOTH women AND men as leaders.

Look at the lineup in the photo in this article…All those men in dresses! LOL!

Valk

If I wanted to meet with him, I wouldn’t have given up Catholicism 18 years ago. Never trust a guy with his own cobbler & tailor.

Pitch313

I hear overtones of the Pantheacon controversy here–If it’s not for “all,” then who, exactly, comprises the “some”?

Obsidia

Yes, Pitch, this is a time of questioning Authority everywhere!

Anna

I’m not even surprised, really.

kenneth

Why would any pagan leader want to meet with him even if the offer were extended? The pope never meets with ANY religious leaders in good faith, even closely related protestant Christian sects, and he never meets any other religious leaders as equals.
I have some deep misgivings about the “Interfaith Outreach” crowd within paganism for this reason. It seems like at some level they feel the need for an acknowledgement or “place at the table” with the Big Three in order to legitimize what we are doing. I don’t feel that need at all. I’m happy to dialogue with whoever is willing to do it in good faith, but as for the rest, I have no use for them. They have nothing that I need or want and I refuse to feed them power to grant or deny the authenticity of what I’m doing by their willingness or refusal to acknowledge me or my movement.

Baruch Dreamstalker

Kenneth, let me put on my Unitarian Universalist hat for a moment.

UUs like interfaith outreach for many of the reasons some Pagans do, plus one: Institutional cooperation. Eg, members of the local UU congregation in my town volunteer-staff the overnights wherein the local Catholic church (which has its own building) serves as a temporary shelter for homeless families.

With a few (precious) exceptions, Pagans don’t have the robust institutionalization that UUs do, so this last bit is missing. But I have hope that Paganism will eventually change in this regard, and then the Interfaith Outreach wing will have paved the way so we can hit the ground running in this regard.

kenneth

I don’t think most pagans really want much of an institutional structure or bishops or buildings or any of it. I may be proven wrong one day, but I just don’t feel much interest for those sorts of things in most quarters of the pagan community -except for those sorts who hope to be full time clergy. Nor do I think the Catholic animosity towards us is really just because they can’t talk bureaucrat to bureaucrat with us.
If some local Catholic church or anyone wants to work with us on some project as we are, I’m all for that. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to remake my religion to try to make it “real” in their eyes for the sake of interfaith work. If we’re beneath their notice for lack of hierarchy or because they think we’re Satanic or whatever, then screw em. Let them staff and fund their own efforts without our help.

By trying to do reach out and work with other religions, I don’t think that most Pagans are trying to make our religion “real” in the eyes of other religions. I know I, for one, am trying to dispel the misinformation that they have of the big “us”. If we can show a few people that we *aren’t* all evil Satan worshippers, like they’ve been led to believe, maybe one day we won’t all have to hide our religion in fear.

Crystal Kendrick

I can sort of see both sides of this argument. On one end of the spectrum, I agree with Kenneth that interfaith is most effective when the religions that we’re working with come with open minds. I think the work that Patrick McCollum is doing in India, for instance, is invaluable. Most Hindus don’t have a problem with us. The Dalai Lama is another religious leader who has no problem meeting with people from all religions, but naturally, he’s on the Pope’s poop list too. I also agree with Kenneth that there is a small faction of Pagans who do clamor for the approval of the big monotheistic religions and the unfortunate side effect has been a whitewashing of several varieties of Paganism, whether we like it or not. This has, in my opinion, created just as great of a misunderstanding of our values and ethics than the original misapprehensions of the monotheists when left to their own devices. However, on a more local level (and I know several local Catholic institutions that mostly ignore the Pope like some folks ignore their embarrassing old uncle at family gatherings) if interfaith *in good faith* can be accomplished it should be.

Guest

I guess if someone works really hard they can find nice things to say about this Pope.

When people try to say nice things about Christianity it usually comes out as “oh, well, you know, they’re not nearly as bad as they used to be!” But even this inevitably turns out to be, at best, significantly overstating the positive.

Ursyl

“It is not a church, in the traditional sense.”

Right, because religion started with churches and buildings and formalized hierarchies. Quite ironic to hear the new kid on the block labeling the older form of faith as not traditional.

Saetssage

Seriously, what do you expect from a man that was the head of the inquisition office before he became pope? He has zero intention of ever listening to any other religion because we are all heretics!

The best revenge is to render one’s enemy obsolete. In fifty years, the Pope will be looking to meet with indigenous faiths because they’re growing at a faster pace than Catholicism. The Vatican is not meeting the emotional/physical/spiritual/intellectual needs of their constituents. Those faiths, including ours are.

Crystal Kendrick

Exactly.

Deirdre Hebert

Benedict is taking the Catholic church backward – retreating to the past. I almost wonder how long it will be before they start selling indulgences again.

Castus

I have conflicting feelings on this. On one hand, I really like Pope Benedict’s stance against the liberalisation of the church and his campaign for keeping everything traditional; on the other hand I have a very hard time seeing how meeting with other faiths degenerates Traditional Catholicism.

Crystal Kendrick

Yes, the traditional church was so pleasant, the epitome of its reign of course being the Inquisition and the Crusades. Hoorah!

Castus

Hoorah for misinformation! By Traditional Catholicism, I meant the more conservative and insular kind of Catholicism more often seen before Vatican II; not Mediaeval Catholicism.

Castus, just as all that glitters is not Gold, all that is old and crusty is not Tradition.

Castus

Then what is? Evola can go to hell if you bring him up.

Anonymous

Traditionally, the Church claimed to have exclusive claim to spiritual truth. Any other spiritual claim was, then, in error and anyone who fell into spiritual error was going to be condemned to eternal torment. Thus, treating the representatives of other spiritual traditions as if they are somehow legitimate would simply be to encourage those who, through their words and deeds lead the unwitting into hell. By the traditional logic of Catholicism, then, dealing with such people is, in essence, dealing with servants of Satan. Why would a traditionally minded pope want to do something like that?

Mark

I think you hit the nail on the head.

Lori F – MN

The Pope is an outdate figure. How many Christians actually follow his leadership? Catholics? Protestents? What what percentage of world populace is that? And what’s with the entire city for a religious leader? No wonder the priests have to take a vow of poverty.
I have never understood why there is a pope.

Mary K. Greer

As a young teen, I asked permission of our priest to attend a service with my best friend, whose father was a Baptist minister. (This was at a military chapel where all services were held in the same building—different times.) I was given a resounding “No”, with the admonition to never ask again. I was told that any ‘visiting’ would be considered an acknowledgement that another religion might have some legitimacy – which, of course, they didn’t!

This is one resounding nail in the coffin of my Catholicism.

firefright12

This all ties back to the Churches biggest nightmare. Becoming irrelevant. It also brings up there other nightmare, being reminded that there was something before monotheism. They can’t stand the idea of there being any religion that not only has no concept of sin and judgment, but are a living reminders of what there “holy book” says they must fight against and what they couldn’t squash a thousand years ago. I think because the church can no longer try and crush pagan religions, they are trying to ignore them and hop they go away. On a final not, the Christians have destroyed countless holy places of pagans over the centuries. I wonder what would happen if an army of pagans came to the vatican with sledgehammers and began beating away at it?

Nick Ritter

I think the Church *can* try and crush pagan religions, it just can’t go in with fire and sword. Economics and media are today’s weapons.

“I wonder what would happen if an army of pagans came to the vatican with sledgehammers and began beating away at it?”

I wonder, rather, what would happen if pagans revived those “countless holy places”.

Nick Ritter: “I think the Church *can* try and crush pagan religions, it just can’t go in with fire and sword. Economics and media are today’s weapons.”

And they still employed the sword openly until quite recently (in historical terms). The US invasion of the Philippines was in part justified in explicitly religious terms, and when president McKinley announced the annexation of the Philippines he declared that it was America’s responsibility “to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died.” That was in 1889.

Even more recently, during the savage British war against the Mau Mau uprising, Lord Milverton gave a speech before Parliament in which he described the aims of the African rebels as follows: “to drive out all foreigners; the destruction of Christianity; the seizure of all land for African use; the restoration of ancient customs and independent self-government … It is, of course, easy to see why the destruction of Christianity occupied such a high place in their aims, because any study of this emergency cannot help attracting one’s attention to the fact that the core of the resistance amongst the Africans to Mau Mau has been among the African Christians“ That was in 1955!

Rhoanna

Minor nitpick, but those examples involve Protestant or Anglican Christianity, not Catholicism. Not that that means the Catholic Church has been any better, just that those examples aren’t it.